Do you depend on your computer for your living? If so, I'm sure you've thought long and hard about which hardware and software to use. I'd like to explain why I use generic "white boxes" running open source software. These give me a platform I rely on for 100% availability. They also provide a low-cost solution with excellent security and privacy.

(As an aside, this is also a reason why I am strongly anti-BYOD. In my view, this is just a way for your employer or IT department to have you pay for computer maintenance costs that they benefit from.)

IMO, I'd rather do the BYOD thing, if it means I can run whatever software I want, as opposed to having that dictated to me. For example, I hate working in a locked-down corporate environment, where I have to use apps like Windows Explorer, and can't install any 3rd party tools. If it means I have to pay for those tools, I'm good with that, since I'm probably already using them anyway at home.

IMO, I'd rather do the BYOD thing, if it means I can run whatever software I want, as opposed to having that dictated to me. For example, I hate working in a locked-down corporate environment, where I have to use apps like Windows Explorer, and can't install any 3rd party tools. If it means I have to pay for those tools, I'm good with that, since I'm probably already using them anyway at home.

Yup, annoying sysadmins suck. So far, those which I have met at work have been quite reasonable (either giving us an admin account on our machines, or accepting to install well-known software like Gimp or Firefox on demand), but I have heard horror stories about those who aren't.

I'd argue that even having your own laptop around won't save you from them though, because they have control on much more than just individual machines. Ever worked in one of these places where they block the IMAP and SMTP ports (and their SSL version) for "security reasons" that they won't explain ?

Ever worked in one of these places where they block the IMAP and SMTP ports (and their SSL version) for "security reasons" that they won't explain ?

Yup, I work for such a company. They also, for some inexplicable reason, decided to block all the balloon/popup notifications in the taskbar. I had a ton of scripts that were using this feature, so had to write a custom routine for all of them to get around the block.

If you bother to question any of it, 'corporate policy' is the standard reply. So apparently, some asshole way up stream is making all of these decisions, whom we can never speak to, and who never makes exceptions under any circumstances.